Mr. Speaker, I begin by acknowledging clearly the contribution those people who live north of 60 make to Canada and the contribution they have made in the past. Let me acknowledge for example that their presence has been extremely important for the maintenance of Canadian sovereignty in the high Arctic in the past.
These people live in an area of Canada that experiences a harsh climate. It is a difficult lifestyle. It is a difficult place to earn a living.
As a member of parliament who represents a northern riding in British Columbia with many small and remote communities, I have some understanding of what it would be like to live north of 60, although obviously I do not understand it completely.
Let us examine what this bill is about and ask ourselves some very serious questions with regard to where we are headed. To listen to some of the members in this place today we would think the people who currently live north of 60 do not have a justice system and have no access to justice.
We know that is not right. We know these people have had access to justice since the inception of Canadian sovereignty in 1867.
What we have come to understand, certainly from the Reform Party's point of view, is that this is another piece of legislation that is a furtherance to the whole concept of Nunavut. Nunavut from the perspective of many people in the Reform Party is a very badly flawed and fiscally irresponsible idea which is bereft of intellectual discipline.
Acknowledging that people who live north of 60 live in a harsh climate and difficult circumstances does not mean that it is somehow a good idea to adopt the notion of Nunavut and then spend $300 million of taxpayer money just to implement it.
For the 25,000 or so people who live in this area to be covered under Nunavut, equivalent to a medium size town in rural Canada, these people are to receive an expenditure per capita of about $12,000. Let us not forget that about half these people are children below the age of majority. It is not a very large population at all but it is a huge expenditure.
In order to implement Nunavut the government now has to set up a judicial system, to set up a legislature, to set up a senate and all these trappings that go along with the concept of the territory of Nunavut.
Nunavut in the opinion of many, including some constitutional experts, people who were around the table in 1980-1981 when former Prime Minister Trudeau was in the process attempting to patriate the Constitution to Canada, is actually the creation of a province through the back door.
In strict terms, if the Government of Canada and the provinces were in agreement that a new province should be created there is a process that must be followed in order to effect the constitutional change required to see that come about.
However, the Government of Canada arbitrarily and in isolation has decided to create this new territory called Nunavut and it is a province in everything but name.
I suggest there will come a time when somebody, some province or some group will challenge the constitutionality of the legislation which brings Nunavut to life. I suggest there is a good likelihood the challenge will succeed.
For the expenditure proposed, and the $300 million implementation cost is only a small part of the overall cost, we can only wonder what could have been achieved for the people who live north of 60 and what they are getting. What they are getting is a huge bureaucracy. Along with that the idea that large bureaucracies somehow increase people's standard of living and create wealth is being reinforced. We know they do not.
We know that for many decades now both Liberal and Conservative administrations in Ottawa have attempted to practise this faulty fiscal policy and it has nearly bankrupted the country. We now have, even among Liberals which is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, the acknowledgement that we have to look at ways of increasing people's living standards and improving their lifestyles other than through government intervention.
What is being proposed for Nunavut is a massive infusion of federal dollars to implement and on an ongoing basis maintain, which is somehow supposed to improve the standard of living of people in that area. I suggest this is not about wealth creation but about an ongoing transfer of wealth from the rest of Canada to a very large geographical area, very sparsely populated. I believe the thinking behind Nunavut is faulty.
There are a number of questions that come to my mind when I look at the bill before us. What is missing? How much will this piece of legislation cost? How much is it going to cost to implement and maintain? Who is going to pay that?
I do not think 25,000 people in the high Arctic will be able to underwrite the cost of this on an ongoing basis through their tax base. I just do not see that.
What we are saying in effect is that the Canadian government, i.e. Canadian taxpayers from coast to coast, is going to underwrite the costs of this new justice system in perpetuity. I say there is something fundamentally wrong with that. A justice system can be made available to people who live north of 60 and all the other departments of government available to most Canadians can be made available on a much more cost effective basis which would be much more fair to the taxpayers in the rest of Canada.
Again I say this is the result of an intellectual process which is at best faulty and which is at worst bankrupt.
The people who came up with this brainchild and passed it through the House of Commons in form of legislation continue to support it and to enact further legislation to effect the implementation of Nunavut. They have not been honest with themselves or with the people north of 60 whom the legislation is supposed to benefit. Nor have they been honest with the rest of Canada.
There are many parallels. I know this is not a land treaty or a land claim agreement, but in the great deal of the thinking behind Nunavut and what has gone into supporting it is the notion that people north of 60, who are predominantly of aboriginal extraction, Inuit, should have a greater degree of say and control over their own lives.
I do not think anyone in the House would disagree. I do not think anyone wants to say that these people should be dictated to from Ottawa. Lord knows that as a British Columbian growing up during the sixties and seventies I certainly got a bellyful of Ottawa dictating to British Columbia and to me as a citizen of British Columbia how I should live.